Religious Tolerance Was Hard - Politics Is The Same
To many of us in the modern world religious tolerance feels like an obvious virtue. Who besides a bigot would want to stop someone from being able to practice their preferred faith or discriminate against someone of a different religion for a job or in an election? But that's only because most of us no longer really believe that good people who believe the wrong things are denied salvation -- and the few people who do are immersed in a culture that values religious toleration. But, to appreciate how revolutionary this value truly is put yourself in the shoes of someone who takes the theological doctrine (still part of most protestant theology) of salvation through faith alone. If you believe that the only way people can get to heaven is via belief in the divinity of Christ then those Hindu or Islamic sermons aren't some harmless matter of taste -- they are literally daming people’s immortal souls. The Hare Krishna at the airport is more dangerous than any terrorist -- they can only kill you but a proselytizing infidel might condemn your friend or relative to an eternity in hell (or at least deny them salvation). For someone who takes these beliefs seriously religious tolerance is asking them to coexist with people they see as every bit as dangerous and harmful as the extremes of both parties see the other side today.
I don't know if it made sense for true believers in traditional religious dogma to adopt religious tolerance but politics isn't zero-sum and we all lose when -- because we can't even acknowledge much less accept and compromise with the beliefs and values of half the country -- both sides instead make choices that help undermine the norms, institution of our republic and the emotional ties that bind us together.
We need to remember that tolerating people with truly clashing worldviews isn't easy -- it's gut wrenching and painful. It's not just some meaningless crap about what robes the guy who runs your rituals wears but respecting people even when their deeply held beliefs feel like they threaten you. It's people on the left understanding that yes keeping guns is deeply important to many Americans and it's not just a few villains in the NRA -- it's a deeply important part of how many people understand what it means to be free. It's people on the right accepting that sexual and gender freedom is equally valuable to a large fraction of people in blue states. It's both sides recognizing that those on the other side are just as concerned with protecting children as you are and that what seems like callous disregard to you is instead flowing from a deeply different value system.
None of this means you need to change your views or stop believing the other side is deeply mistaken. But it does mean emotionally regarding people on the other side as good, if mistaken, people -- not just villains and useful idiots. Most importantly, it means accepting that you can't rout the other side from out political landscape and that some compromise to live together needs to be worked out.
And yes that is going to be painful but I’ll leave particulars for later.
For the record most of this has been a saved draft for months it just felt appropriate to post now.
It does not surprise me was drafted months ago; no matter who won, it was going to be bitter and divisive. I think this sentiment is crucial to remember, and offers up a lot of historical parallels. If you accept the premise that "Wokeness" was a religious movement - as several commentators in the "grey tribe" do - then MAGA is something like a counter-reformation. But instead of fighting over souls, people are fighting over status within America's civil religion. Instead of ecclesiastical and secular courts, we have HR inquiries and the Court of Public Opinion. I think this framing allows a pithy explanation of the last decade of politics.
Wokeness was the expansion of a particular "critique" of American civil religion into the organs of American government. This was led primarily from universities, and achieved power in proportion to how much university graduates dominated the culture or institution. Because Wokeness is nominally secular, it was able to evade certain anti-theocratic laws and norms that Americans are used to. This expansion was opposed by evangelicals and believers in the old style of American civic religion. Trump, for all his flaws, is good at identifying the motivations of people who like him. This allowed him to merge the pro-Christian and pro-America strands of anti-Wokeness. Of course, being a narcissist, his main goal was to substitute a religion where no one is above the law to one where he personally is above the law. But, ironically, I think this shows how powerful American civic religion is. If someone like Trump can take power by never apologizing for being American, then that demonstrates being pro-America is much more powerful than being pro-Christian. Hopefully, both sides realize this and come up with more ways to channel American optimism rather than pessimism as their guiding lights.